“Dating” site imports 250,000 Facebook profiles, without permission

A prank dating site that scraped a million profiles from Facebook has the …

How does a unknown dating site, with the absurd intention of destroying Facebook, launch with 250,000 member profiles on the first day?

Simple.

You scrape data from Facebook.

At least, that’s the approach taken by two provocateurs who launched Lovely-Faces.com this week, with profiles—names, locations and photos—scraped from publicly accessible Facebook pages. The site categorizes these unwitting volunteers into personality types, using a facial recognition algorithm, so you can search for someone in your general area who is “easy going,” “smug” or “sly.”

In what seems to be liberal-arts-grad-schoolese, Paolo Cirio, a media artist, and Alessandro Ludovic, media critic and editor in chief of Neural magazine, explain why they made the site.

“Facebook, an endlessly cool place for so many people, becomes at the same time a goldmine for identity theft and dating—unfortunately, without the user’s control. But that’s the very nature of Facebook and social media in general. If we start to play with the concepts of identity theft and dating, we should be able to unveil how fragile a virtual identity given to a proprietary platform can be.”

And, the duo speculate, if people pull hard enough on that bothersome thread, Facebook’s $50 billion valuation will unravel.

Facebook, as you might expect, is not amused.

“Scraping people’s information violates our terms,” said Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s director of policy communications. “We have taken, and will continue to take, aggressive legal action against organizations that violate these terms. We’re investigating this site and will take appropriate action.”

Cirio and Ludovic say they will take down a user’s profile if a person asks, and the site doesn’t have any indication they are actually trying to make any money. Instead, it’s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of Internet behemoths.

Moreover, it’s a bit funny hearing Facebook complain about scraping of personal data that is quasi-public.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder, made his name at Harvard in 2003 by scraping the names and photos of fellow classmates off school servers to feed a system called FaceMash. With the photos, Zuckerberg created a controversial system that pitted one co-ed against another, by allowing others to vote on which one was better looking.

So even if Facebook’s anticipated legal nasty gram makes its way to the duo, who seem to be based somewhere in Europe, they’ll have an excellent defense.

It's a little ironic, yeah. Isn't it Facebook that constantly harasses its users with new opt-outs into making more and more of their information public? What did they think was going to happen? Hey Mark, this is exactly why people were mad at you for doing that.

The essence of Facebook's business model is that if you want to invade people's privacy on a massive scale, you have to pay Facebook to do it. Doing it without paying them for the privilege makes them very mad.

It doesn't matter if it's a violation of the terms of service - they're proving a point. Somebody with less admirable intentions can scrape the same data, just as easily, and use it for nefarious purposes.

I don't have a facebook account, and never will. I actually refuse to visit the site at all. It's a scourge on the Internet that needs to be blasted away.

It's only a matter of time before something blows up in their face for having so much data just hanging out there. It's like walking around with your balls hanging out of your zipper - sooner or later, somebody is going to reach out and slap it, and it's going to hurt like hell.

The phrase, tough shit comes to mind for some reason. I don't use, and never will use Facebook for just this very reason.

This is only the tip of the Facebook privacy iceberg: their database of phone numbers has been leaked online. Look at http://www.dirtyphonebook.com for example. How did they get millions of phone numbers and Facebook profiles on there?

It doesn't matter if it's a violation of the terms of service - they're proving a point. Somebody with less admirable intentions can scrape the same data, just as easily, and use it for nefarious purposes.

I don't have a facebook account, and never will. I actually refuse to visit the site at all. It's a scourge on the Internet that needs to be blasted away.

It's only a matter of time before something blows up in their face for having so much data just hanging out there. It's like walking around with your balls hanging out of your zipper - sooner or later, somebody is going to reach out and slap it, and it's going to hurt like hell.

The phrase, tough shit comes to mind for some reason. I don't use, and never will use Facebook for just this very reason.

This is only the tip of the Facebook privacy iceberg: their database of phone numbers has been leaked online. Look at http://www.dirtyphonebook.com for example. How did they get millions of phone numbers and Facebook profiles on there?

They don't have mine. It's simple ... set your security. Most people don't. I remember being able to view a profile of some local "night club dancer" simply by looking over a list of "friends" on some restaurant's profile. Not only did I see the list of friends that person had, but also viewed some pictures, and saw profiles there that weren't protected either. I'm hedging a bet that majority of FB users haven't properly set their security and you can easily access about 40%-70% of their information with a simple mouse click.

The photographer still owns the copyright to the photos, even on Facebook, right? Time for a BIG CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT.

When you "sign" the agreement with Facebook you give them permission to use the data you post there. However they don't get exclusive permission, so photographers keep their rights. It's all pretty standard legal boilerplate for almost any site that allows user-generated content.

How annoying, screw the morality of taking from facebook, what about the people who are having their personal information stolen by a bunch of self-righteous asshats for profit. My profile is set to private, well I assume since facebook changes the settings so damn often it's hard to keep up, but if my information ended up on there I'd be pretty damn pissed off.

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

When you use an application, your content and information is shared with the application. We require applications to respect your privacy, and your agreement with that application will control how the application can use, store, and transfer that content and information. (To learn more about Platform, read our Privacy Policy and Platform Page.)

When you publish content or information using the "everyone" setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).

We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).

“Scraping people’s information violates our terms,” said Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s director of policy communications. “We have taken, and will continue to take, aggressive legal action against organizations that violate these terms. We’re investigating this site and will take appropriate action.”

Facebook’s terms of service require those who want to collect data from its pages to apply for permission, which Cirio and Ludovic did not do when they pulled down publicly available profile information on a million Facebook users. (They aren’t the first to scrape a million Facebook profiles.)

If they only scraped publicly available information then presumably they didn't need to register a Facebook account, and if they didn't register a Facebook account then how can they be forced to abide by Facebook's terms of service, terms that one agrees to...when registeriing a Facebook account?

o_O

Further, how can Facebook demand that people ask permission before collecting data from publicly visible user pages when according to their own terms, users own all of that data, not Facebook?

Not quite. If you're a user with a profile, you're not a customer of FaceBook. You're a product on offer.Phil

Bingo - amazing how many people still dont grasp this. There's that old term "If you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product".

When Facebook owners are cashing in on enterprise valuations of 50 Billion dollars or whatever, yes that's YOU being sold. Basically you gave yourself away in return for for low-res, postage stamp-sized picture hosting, a restricted email box and a web home page.

Biggest swindle since Manhattan was bought for a small handful of glass beads a couple hundred years ago...

Double Standards everywhere on the Internet - do as we say NOT as we do.

FuKNGRuVN wrote:

Ah-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

"Suck it up, princess."

LMAO !! I second this remark - Facebook needs to un-bunch their Knickers and grow a pair.

Quote:

“Scraping people’s information violates our terms,” said Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s director of policy communications. “We have taken, and will continue to take, aggressive legal action against organizations that violate these terms. We’re investigating this site and will take appropriate action.”

IF someone never agrees to the ToS to start with - AND NO simply by loading the first page of a Website does not leaglly bind you to any Terms....

Then Facebook has nothing to moan about having it's publically accessible information pulkled and recompiled. The Internet is Public people. Deal with it !

If Google (and other search engines) can access the information - anyone can. IF Facebook doesn't want their user information gathered for external purposes then they need to take steps to privatize it behind logins and security - Oh Wait ! Ha Ha Ha Ha

Not quite. If you're a user with a profile, you're not a customer of FaceBook. You're a product on offer.Phil

Bingo - amazing how many people still dont grasp this. There's that old term "If you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product".

When Facebook owners are cashing in on enterprise valuations of 50 Billion dollars or whatever, yes that's YOU being sold. Basically you gave yourself away in return for for low-res, postage stamp-sized picture hosting, a restricted email box and a web home page.

Biggest swindle since Manhattan was bought for a small handful of glass beads a couple hundred years ago...

I take it you never use a search engine or visit any site that makes money from targeted ads, right?

Search engines don't ask you to set up a profile with your real name, address, phone number and a list of your family & friends and their email addresses. Nor do they record your comments and sell them as product endorsements.

If you knowingly give all that away for access to a bulletin board cum digital billboard on steroids then hey you deserve to be exploited.